


Family Feud

by kimboo_york



Category: Original Work
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Gen, moon base
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-20 23:19:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 10,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimboo_york/pseuds/kimboo_york
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angie and Peter grew up together on the moon mining base that their father ran. After his death, a crisis on the base drives them apart just when the survivors need their leadership the most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of an experiment. The story is also available at Wattpad. I'm working on developing an online platform as a writer, so I want to compare several factors such as ease of management as the creator, the kind of reactions I get on the different platforms, and which environment seems to promote me more as an author. 
> 
> Which is my way of saying, caveat emptor. This is a SF action yarn, not great literature.

The ancient fax clacked out information on a roll of thermal paper which was yellowed with age but usable. The sound echoed throughout the room. Li watched Angie as she sat near the machine, her feet on the desk, leaning back, staring at the ceiling tiles with her arms crossed. 

He walked over from his cubicle and gave the fax a menacing look meant for Angie (and she probably knew it) before sighing. “This is ridiculous.” 

Cooke, sitting two desks over and filing her nails, looked up at them and snorted.

“Or we can kick the high power transmitter on and eat wattage. Up to you.” Angie’s eyes never moved as she spoke. Cooke ran her hands through her spiky blond hair and rolled her eyes at Li in frustration. The best indicator of the severity of their situation was the dark roots and shaggy look of her hairstyle, which was now in its third month of neglect.

Li offered her a shrug. He was even taller than Angie, and when he sat down on the edge of her desk it felt as if he crumpled. 

“Why couldn’t they wait until the next scheduled transmission? Why the all-fire hurry?” He leaned over Angie to catch her eye. She kicked her feet off the desk and sat up. 

“I don’t know. Neither does Peter; don’t ask.” 

Li shrugged, since he was not planning on asking Peter anyway. 

Sue walked in to drop off some papers at her own desk, taking in the scene with a practiced eye. “Inventory?” 

“Yep,” said Angie, crossing her arms again.

“Not like it’s going to change, other than to get smaller.”

“Yep,” said Li, crossing his own. Sue recognized a stone wall when she walked into one, though, so she shook her head and headed back out. 

“She’ll tell Peter,” said Cooke, brandishing her nail file at Angie.

“Fine. Doesn’t change anything.” Angie leaned back to stare at the ceiling again. Next to her, the fax machine rattled on.

Li had his suspicions about the fax and he knew Angie did too, but it was safer in the meantime to pretend they didn't.


	2. Chapter 2

When Peter was six years old, he loved the Moon. It was a vast adventure land that most children never got to play on, a huge ball of dirt which was his for the taking – his, and his sister Angie’s. She was only three when the family first arrived, and she did not remember much of it but he recalled rolling her stroller up to the window of their father’s office and pointing out the landmarks they could see from there. Peter knew she loved it too, even back then when their parents told him that she was too young to know the difference. Fond memories were all he had left, though, because he did not love the Moon anymore. It was an empty, ruthless place that he longed to leave, without really imagining that he ever could.

He was sitting at his desk in his father’s old office, studying the small globe of Earth in front of him. Earth was actually hanging somewhere over his left shoulder at the moment, a fact he knew as certainly as he knew the time. He looked up when Sue barged in.

“NMSMO is sending another inventory for us to do.” She used the station word for the National Moon and Space Mining Operation, “mizmo,” and Peter almost smiled. His father never allowed that low-brow slang into his executive suite.

He shook his head. “Next transmission is scheduled for 1600 hours standard.”

“No, I mean now. By fax. In the main office, I saw Angie baby-sitting it with Li.”

Satellite fax was cheaper than the laser, just a lot slower. What Peter did not understand was why they bothered, when it was already 1340 by the clock. They could have waited two hours for regular transmission. He spun the globe with a finger. “Angie’s got it, then. She knows what to do.” 

Sue was truly International: a French Canadian with the temper of a Latina. She claimed her great grandmother was Cuban, and with her thick eyebrows and womanly hips, Sue was convincing enough to be believed. Peter loved watching her walk, coming or going it did not matter, but he hated when she set her hands on those fine hips and raised her expressive eyebrows at him.

“Are you just going to sit there?”

He refused to return her stare.

“Captain Peter Franklin McDonnell, are you just going to sit there?”

“What should I do? March over and rip the report out of her hands?” 

Sue opened her mouth to answer, but Peter raised a hand. “No, Sue. No. We know what this means, that they are crunching the numbers on their side and that’s all. It will just cause a big row for nothing.” He motioned for her to sit down. After a moment, she gave in and sat in one of the executive leather and wood chairs across the desk from him. It was a handsome, traditional office for a risky, high-tech enterprise, and it never looked right to those who grew up on the station. It was the fact that it was his father’s own office that kept Peter in it, more than the furniture which, to him and others, was Earthy and exotic. 

“Peter—” Sue started, then stopped and chewed her lower lip.

“Everyone’s worried. I know.”

“You are the leader now. All the miners are gone, it’s just us. You are going to have to make a decision here, whether Mizmo likes it or not.”

“It’s not Mizmo I’m thinking of.”

“Angie,” said Sue with a heavy sigh, leaning back into the chair. 

“She’s got a point.”

“She’s not the Executive Captain here!”

“She could be, she’s as well trained as I am and everyone knows it. Look, whatever we do, we are going to have to do it company-wide and everyone is going to have to work together. The less I do to pull things apart the better.”

“It doesn’t matter what you do, Angie has already pulled things apart. It’s your job to put them back together.” Sue stood up. “You know I’m on your side.”

Peter templed his fingers and closed his eyes. “We don’t need ‘sides.’”

“Well, you got ‘em.” Sue walked out.


	3. Chapter 3

Cooke read the print out and snarled. "I am not, repeat, not counting pencils."

"Just agree with what they put there." Li leaned over her as they read down the roll of inventory that curled onto the floor and was still chattering out of the fax. "This is just the offices and living quarters. Nothing from the physical plant."

"They plan on leaving it to come back to. The only question anyone is asking is: what can stay, what can leave?" Angie paced the office. 

"You mean, who." Cooke handed the readout to Li and sat back down at her desk. 

"No one is being left behind, Cooke," said Li, giving her a long, slow smile. She purred back at him, their flirting ritual of four years uninterrupted even by catastrophe. Li was a former miner, come into Mizmo management the hard way, and he had a shorter history in the offices than anyone else but Cooke never seemed to care. She was one of the ones who had spaced up as soon as they were seventeen and old enough to sign the sterilization consent form. "No babies born on the Moon" was the rule, and that had suited her fine. 

Angie and Peter, on the other hand, were of the few raised station side. Of the 100 or so office workers, only twelve had grown up there, and they were a tight group. Even in their current divided state, the Station Rats kept in contact, if only to argue. 

"Sam." Angie waggled her ringing phone at Li, who nodded but did not bother to reply. Sam was Angie’s closest contact to Peter, the boy who was Peter’s best friend and Angie’s first crush. Li did not envy Sam's current status of envoy between them. 

Angie grimaced before answering, thumbing it to speaker because she could be a real asshole sometimes. Li rolled his eyes and she gave him a feral grin. 

"What, you’ve taken the fax hostage?"

"Sam, it’s just an inventory from Mizmo. Big deal. Tell Peter he’ll get to see it, too."

"Peter doesn’t care, told me to piss off. Sue and the others, though, are hot, and I mean it."

"Okay…and what? They going to storm the main office? Welcome on! They can have it, and the inventory too."

"Damnit, I’m just sayin—"

"What? Saying what? I’m doing my job, Sam. That’s all. As Assistant Executive Captain, inventory is part of my job description. They can look it up online, so tell them to bite my ass."

"Don’t be stupid."

"I’m not."

"While you and Peter duke it out, have either of you stopped to think that everyone’s lives are at stake here? The station’s failing, Angie."

"Like I don’t know that? Fuck off!" She hung up on him.

"You know how Sam hates cursing." Cooke looked straight at her.

"Not the time to pick a fight, Cooke. Back off."

"Just saying!" 

Li raised his hand to silence them, feeling the tremors of shock down his spine as he read the latest print out. "This isn’t inventory." Angie and Cooke scrambled over to look.

"Holy mother—evac instructions? This is what couldn’t wait until the regular transmission? My god, are we on countdown?" Cooke’s eyes scrolled over the text as she talked.

"And why stick it at the end of inventory?" Li looked over at Angie, puzzled.

"Good way for us to miss it," she said.

Halfway through the evacuation instructions, the paper roll ran out.


	4. Chapter 4

At the call, Peter plowed out of his office and headed straight for the main office. The executive branch was a small pod sitting high on the crater’s side, over and above the rest of the station. He jogged down the ramps and tunnels that led to the largest pod where most of the administrative offices were, passing few people. Since the majority of the miners were evacuated two months ago, the station was only hosting a skeleton office crew, a few engineers, and a handful of mining supers, none of whom had much to work on since the mining stopped. He passed office clusters where people were trying to find something to do, or catching up on filing, or simply sitting around any place that was not the cafeteria, but overall the whole station felt deserted. He finally came up to the main office, a large and long pod with no interior divisions, filled with low-walled cubicles. Like everywhere else, it was a ghost town, except for the three people standing on the far side by the ancient, back-up fax machine.

"Evacuation?" He called out as he crossed the expanse of desks and clutter. Cooke looked up at him, visibly shaken, Li standing next to her as if to prop her up. Angie stood with her back to the wall, furious.

"Those bastards!" She held up the long sheaf of paper. Peter could see the color in her cheeks as soon as she looked up.

"I’m glad you called," he said, finally slowing his pace as he approached them.

"I’m sure as hell not going to be blamed for keeping you in the dark," Angie snapped.

"It’s okay." Peter gently took the fax roll and started reading it. He scrolled up to where the evac instructions began, and looked at the time frame. "No," he said, jerking his head up to look at Li, disbelief in his voice.

"Yep. That’s it."

"They know we can’t do it that fast!" Cooke punched at the fax paper where Peter was holding it.

"We need to flood the mines. Vacuum out, and—"

"Angie, we can’t try for the Wadi." Peter switched his gaze to his sister, who began pacing.

"We don’t have a choice, Peter, and you know it."

"No. We evac according to instructions."

Li and Cooke moved back slightly from the confrontation, glancing at each other nervously and Peter couldn't blame them. The last time he and Angie faced off, a ping pong table in the rec room got broken (which was on him, despite Angie being the one with the reputation for being hot-headed). 

"Play it safe? The LQ won’t clear re-entry, I thought we established that." Angie stopped and crossed her arms, daring the challenge.

He was half tempted not to try. The LQ, the living quarters pod, was the remains of two retro-fitted cargo carriers designed to hold the private and extremely small apartments of the office staff. They were currently 80 years ancient; theoretically, and only in a time of utter desperation, the LQ could be de-retrofitted into one large cargo transport in order to ship people back to Earth. Mizmo never seriously entertained the idea, assuming (as they all had) that there would never, ever be any interruption in regular cargo shuttle flights. The economic and political collapse of Greater China had not been on anyone’s radar, at least not at Mizmo, and with the shut down of interplanetary launches Earth-side, it came as a shock for management to realize that the company’s major holdings were locked in space. The miners unionized at the last minute and negotiated an extraction on what turned out to be the last two large cargo transports; about half of the office workers loyally voted to stay, mostly due to Peter’s campaigning for cooperation with Mizmo HQ, which promised to send transports up to rescue them but so far had not. That fact alone now undercut his popularity with the majority of the stranded staff.

But the Wadi, as the terraforming domes complex was called, was a worse choice. At least, Peter thought so. 

The engineered, terraformed green space was holding up well, with a few specifically chosen plant and animal species thriving in the 100-acre parkland. It was not, however, designed to sustain the life support of 114 extra humans for any great length of time; it was designed to be an experiment, not a life raft. Angie and her crew crunched numbers on the deal and declared it sound, but Peter harbored a bad feeling about it. A very bad feeling. The last time he got a very bad feeling about something, people died. Including his father. 

The situation Peter was facing now was as unforgiving as that one, actually worse when he compared them. They could not head for the hills and just evac later, and once they evac’ed the LQ there was no turning around. The choice was one or the other, and soon. 

He also had serious doubts about the reason behind the failure of the station, which was critical at that point and irreversible. For over fifty years the filtration systems worked beautifully, recycling water and air so efficiently that supplements were needed only once a year. For the past two years the filtration system degraded to the point where they were now boiling water to drink it. 

Peter always considered the idea of sabotage, in fact so did his father. As he read over the abruptly cut off evac instructions, he began to reconsider the idea, even as farfetched as he knew it was. Impossible, even. 

Behind him, Cooke finished loading their last roll of thermal paper into the fax machine so it could continue printing. As it clacked to life, Angie began pacing. It was a bad sign.

"I know you don’t have a lot of confidence in me, but trust me, Angie, the Wadi won’t work."

"France is in the middle of negotiating with Mizmo on an emergency rescue launch. They can do it, if they get time. The Wadi only has to hold us for a couple of months."

"I read the news too, Angie. But I don’t think France is as ready to help transport 100-plus people off the Moon as the news channels say they are. Once we are at the Wadi, this place will degrade fast and we won’t be able to come back if—"

Angie slammed her hand on a desk. "Damnit! You can’t have it both ways! You killed Dad trying to cover your ass, and now you are doing it again! It’s either the LQ or the Wadi, Peter, and the numbers on the LQ don’t run! You keep playing it safe and we’re all going to get killed!"

Peter looked down at the fax he was still holding. He did not argue back, and in the silence, Angie’s heavy breathing started to calm down. Li leaned forward.

"Peter, she’s being harsh, but she’s got a point."

Peter looked over at him. "I know. But she’s wrong." He dropped the fax and walked out before Angie got her second wind.


	5. Chapter 5

The vodka, if it could be called that, burned from top to bottom. The Mizmo engineers on station were top notch, but their ingredients were not and their distillation method was not as refined as it was illegal. For lack of anything imported, though, Peter took what he was offered.

"You can’t let her bully you like that," Sam said.

"Thanks. You and all three of your friends are a great comfort to me." Peter rubbed his temples as Sam refilled the glass. 

"There’s more than three of us. Counting me, Sue, and half the engineers we’ve got at least seven," Sam laughed and leaned back in his chair. They were sitting in his office, which was much more in keeping with station style than the Captain’s suite. Mostly beige and white, it looked battered and bulky with industrial stuffing leaking out of the chair seats and large bolts holding the file cabinets in place. The desk developed a structural crack a generation ago, but Sam literally grew up finding ways to hold the pieces together. His latest innovation involved high-tensile plastic wrap and some kind of orange glue. 

"Everyone knows I called it wrong on the filter exchange. I got three people hurt, one killed. Even Angie blames me, and I guess she should. She’s right, Sam, I held them in the lock too long trying to hedge my bets." He emptied the tumbler.

"Easy, there, champ. That’s strong stuff." Sam kicked his legs as they dangled over the edge of his chair. At 5’2", he never in his life sat in a chair where his feet reached the floor, and he developed the habit of kicking them back and forth whenever he wanted to stress his point, as if he were playing soccer with the idea.

"Look, Peter: everyone went over that a thousand times. You played it safe, your own father agreed with your decision, and it was pure dumb luck that the new filter box imploded. No one knew the problem existed, no one could have. Your father died a hero, but that’s not your fault. Can you please accept that?" Sam, obviously weary of having the same discussion every day, finally drew his legs up so he curled into the chair like a cat. 

Peter reached over and refilled his own glass. "If we go to the Wadi, we’ll all die. I know it, Sam. France can _not_ get a rescue here in time. Angie thinks we’ve got two months there but we won’t. France will land a cargo to cart our dehydrated dust back. I’m the one who says we should launch the rotted hulk of the LQ and risk re-entry, and everyone thinks I’m playing it safe? What the hell?"

Sam chewed his bottom lip, and spoke without looking at Peter. "I’ve spec’d her numbers, Peter. They look good."

"Damn!" Peter slammed his drink down on the desk, which rattled nervously. "Not you too!"

"Peter, the filter disaster was not your fault. Okay? And look at this with fresh eyes. The LQ is about as stable as my desk. One wrong move, one loose tile, and we’re eating plasma. Remember the Columbia shuttle? The Vancouver shipment? That could be us. And we really don’t have professional pilots here. You trust the automatics that much?"

Peter actually did agree with Sam, but it was the small nagging dark suspicion that held him back from saying so. Sam gargled vodka and gave another exasperated sigh, directed specifically at Peter. It was obvious that not friendship, his winning personality or even his direct authority was going to win anyone to his side, and Peter was tired of fighting it. There was more than one reason he was at fault when his father died.

"You’re right, Sam. On every point. So is Angie. I’ve spec’d her numbers a hundred times and I can’t find a hole."

Sam leaned forward, serious and worried. "180. Confused. Explain." He held his hand out the way they did as kids, when making a bet: palm open, facing up.

"Have you talked to the Ranchers lately?"

"Sure. ‘Course. They need my radiation numbers." Sam leaned back with an ‘it’s clearly obvious’ shrug. The relationship between their station and the Wadi was always cordial, because at least on paper they were both Mizmo operations. The stationers called the Wadi scientists "ranchers" and in turn the Ranchers called them "miners" and everyone made jokes about owing the company store. The Ranchers, though, were a small, select lot of scientists who were exempt from the "no babies" law, meaning some of them were third generation on the Moon and very territorial. Peter knew there were precisely twenty-three ranchers in residence, and half of them he knew from childhood. Such a small group could not do everything, though, and nor were they interested, so they let the station crunch the boring numbers and measure the mundane dangers and that was why Sam got a chance to talk to them at all. Peter, on the other hand, talked to them from a purely social standpoint, not a luxury many other stationers enjoyed. 

"Right. But I mean, talk to them. As in, 'hi, how you doin'?"

Sam shook a finger at him. "You’re going somewhere with this, I can tell."

"Enough sarcasm. What I’m trying to tell you is that the talks we’ve had with them lately have been strained. It bothers me."

"Sure, what you think, they’re thrilled with the idea of 114 ‘miners’ tramping all over the lawn? I don’t blame them that, because from a scientific standpoint it’s a tragedy. Using the Wadi as a life raft will save our lives but kill the project. The environmentals won’t survive us and all the plants will die. I’d be mad if I were them. But what can you do? Sometimes altruism has to take a hit for survival’s sake."

Peter nodded. "Okay, but what I’m really talking about is over the last five years. Before this."

"Things were strained before this? No they weren’t. I talk to them every week. Same tired jokes from that guy Hartsford Jr. over there. Real nut, but thinks he’s funny."

"Look, what I’m trying to say is the numbers run but the psyche doesn’t. The Wadi has been incredibly successful; they’ve got nearly 100 acres growing under seven domes, that’s a quite an accomplishment in less than 100 years for a non-commercial operation. They’re all family over there, cousins and aunts and uncles and kids. They’ve got their own world. My father was picking up on it too, we talked a bit about it when the filtration system here started to fail. For no reason. They’ve got the exact same system in their own office pod, but the Ranchers are drinking clean water and breathing fresh air." Peter tapped the armrest and gazed up at the ceiling, hoping both that Sam would figure it out and that Sam wouldn’t. There were problems with either outcome.

Sam was apparently too incredulous to argue with a madman. He sat staring at Peter with his mouth open, so Peter kept going.

"Even Father felt something was up. That’s why we agreed before he went into the lock to replace the filters that he would stay out there until things were up and running."

"Good grief, Pete, you aren’t serious? Your father made that call? Why the hell didn’t you say something?"

"Because I made the call; Father just made the suggestion. He thought his ideas were crazy, anyway. He hoped he was wrong. By the time we knew he was right it was too late. What could I do? Accuse the Ranchers of murder? If there was tampering, proof was destroyed along with everything else. Along with Dad."

"If you at least told Angie—"

"She’s not fond of theories without evidence. And she blames me for everything, for the filter failures, for Dad, for everything. She would just accuse me of trying to evade responsibility. I guess she’s not far off on that; but still, it would only be ammunition for her."

Sam shook his head. "Pete, you’ve carried the blame for the old man’s death like a boulder on your shoulders for six months. No one can accuse you of evading responsibility there. Quite the reverse, honestly."

"You’re not arguing my hypothesis."

"Because you can’t be serious. The Ranchers sabotaging our station? What the hell for? To get us over there en mass and kill all their precious plants and bugs?" 

"No, no of course not. Say they didn’t bet any of us would stay. Say that once the filtration system looked bust they thought we would all be smart and go home. Just leave. Be smart. But we’re not high minded, smart scientists; we’re miners, really. At heart we’re all miners and we don’t leave just because the air gets dirty. So some stayed…we stayed, and now we have to put our lives in their hands? It’s not a good idea, Sam. I’m telling you, it’s not."

"Sure, okay, sure. One tinsy tiny problem here, Pete: why? What do they care that the Station kept going? You’ve got a great conspiracy, I’ll give you that. But no motive. Man, you got no motive!"


	6. Chapter 6

Angie’s calls to the Ranchers were not being returned. She half expected that, because they were a spooky lot and not happy about the idea of their precious environment being used as a life raft. She knew they would call back, though, because they had to eventually. Eventually, there would not be any way to avoid 114 stationers sitting in bulk transports outside their doors. She could afford to give them some breathing room to get used to the idea.

They were getting used to it already anyway, she figured. Peter was the captain and that meant he had no real idea of what was going on with the different departments, he just steered the ship. And while he was busy piloting them into disaster, he left the running of the Statistics Committee in her hands. They ran the numbers for future growth and development, and nearly two years ago the committee impressed Mizmo by dredging up an idea that everyone forgot about before the station was even built: using the terraforming as a stable platform for mining operations. 

The Wadi was not meant to be commercial, and that was how Mizmo won the contract to mine on the Moon in the first place. If they funded the purely scientific research of the terraforming experiment, Mizmo got the rights to put the mining station in a crater and start blasting away. The two were never supposed to mix, more than they had to anyway, and it was now gospel that the Wadi was the last bastion of pure science. 

Li found out that the idea never started that way. The terraforming was supposed to kick start a development project for mining operations. He found that ancient memo in an obscure folder on an educational server Earthside, when he first come into administration from the mines and was overloading himself on Mizmo culture in order to fit in. He showed it to Angie as a laugh, because it was so far-fetched to them that it really was funny. 

Then Angie started thinking about it. She mentioned it to a geek friend Earthside who took it to his own department’s statisticians, and suddenly everyone was quietly excited about the idea. Other than politics, the real problem Mizmo faced was that orbital space stations were expensive, and tended to fall apart; everyone knew the future lay in ground stations on the Moon and on Mars. Ground stations had their own set of problems, though, and the biggest one by far was sustainability. The current dogma was that in the future, the terraforming operations would export supplies to their sister ground stations, and create symbiosis between finance and science. 

It had been a long, long time since anyone seriously looked at simply putting a mining operation into the middle of a terraform dome. Angie told the Stats Committee to crunch the numbers; they submitted them to her geek friend who ran them by his own people. Together they submitted a paper to Admin, who quickly shoved it up the ladder without fan fair, where it became very popular and very top secret. It was voted a long-term goal of the Board before Angie was able to tell her father about the idea, and then suddenly the filters started failing and other things became more important. Less than a year later her father was dead.

However, she knew that the Ranchers got wind of her ideas somewhere along the line. She did not suspect anyone of telling them straight on, but she had complete confidence in the combined genius of the terraformers. In fact, she knew any single Rancher was smarter than her whole Stats Committee combined. It was their nature to be brilliant – and arrogant and difficult, which she was used to. Her bet was that they figured out what the new plan was just based on the data Mizmo was asking them to collect. Subtlety was not a strong point of the Mizmo suits.

She had known from the start that the Ranchers would not like it and would howl all to hell about it. In the end, though, she also knew that every single one of them was Mizmo crew. They had a genuine emergency on their hands, and if she knew one true fact about the Ranchers it was that they valued life above all things. Life, after all, was their whole purpose.

She sat in the empty conference room while she waited for the Ranchers to call.


	7. Chapter 7

Peter sat in his cabin, on his bunk. He knew Sam did not believe him, and he could forgive that. He was mad at him for being right. For years Sam was always right about everything, and while it helped a lot on their homework assignments in high school, it was still annoying. Peter was facing the truth that no one would ever believe him about the Ranchers if he could not provide a motive. 

It did not help that he did not have much of a solution, either.

He got up and dialed Sue’s extension. She answered on the third ring. 

"I’m having a drink with Moses. Come on down!" She called out. 

"I’ve had plenty with Sam; I think he was trying to poison me."

"There goes your last ally, then."

"Thank you, Sue, for your encouragement."

"What’s up? Surely you don’t want me to work."

"I do. Meet me in conference room 2-B. In fifteen." 

"Damnit, I was joking—"

Peter hung up on her. He was walking into a hornet’s nest, but he knew it would be the only way to fix things; the only way to fix everything.

When he entered Conference Room 2-B, Li was already there, glaring down Sue in a thunderous match of mutual animosity. Sam was curled up on a chair near the back of the table, head tilted up and staring at the ceiling tiles. Cooke fiddled with the communications station, trying to avoid looking at anyone.

"Where is she?" Peter stood at the head of the table and crossed his arms. Li turned his glare on him.

"He’s on his way, Your Majesty."

"That was uncalled for, Li." Sue stood up.

"Stay out of this, Sue."

"Don’t threaten me, Hard Hat. You’ve got some nerve—"

"Stop it, all of you." Peter slashed the air with his hands just as Angie walked in. He pointed at her. "Sit down." He was wearing his full uniform for a change and hoping that he looked every inch of Captain. It seemed to work as everyone sat down and straightened up automatically, even Angie. She did not look pleased about it, however.

"Cooke, do you have the recorder going?"

"Yes, Captain, just like you asked. It’s running." Cooke waved her hands over the comm station then scooted her chair back to the wall, eyeing Angie. 

Peter nodded and remained standing. "Good. I’ve already notified the Ranchers, but I want this all above board. I am personally going over to the Wadi to arrange the transportation logistics."

The stunned silence was broken by Angie. "About damn time, you know."

Peter turned a stony face on her. "Have you been talking to them at all?"

"No. They haven’t been returning my calls. I think they’re still adjusting to the idea."

"I’m sure."

Sam coughed.

"Yes?"

"Peter, is this such a great idea? I mean, well—" Sam looked worried, but stopped. 

"I know we were talking about the Ranchers earlier, and I’ve taken all that into consideration. Anything else?"

There was random head shaking around the table. Peter finally sat down and laid out how he was traveling over to the Wadi, how long he intended to stay, and what he was planning to arrange. It was verbatim the Wadi evacuation plan Angie’s team wrote up three weeks ago, and she looked very smug about it. Peter tried to look like he did not to care. 

"So that’s it. In the meantime, keep to the LQ evacuation schedule sent up from Earthside; I want everything by the book. Agreed?"

When the meeting was over, he asked Sam and Sue to stay behind. Angie pushed her people out the door without glancing at her brother at all, and he shut it behind her.

"Make sure Cooke turned that thing off." He sat back down and they followed him. Sam shut down the comm, then nodded confirmation.

"Two hours after I head out, I want you to supervise the LQ Evac. I want those ships ready to fly. Test run the automatic nav systems a few extra times. Li won’t like it, but make him go outside to do a visual on the tiles; he’s got a miner’s eye for nitnoy problems, and he knows the materials."

Sam nodded, frowning, but Sue erupted. "What? What’s going on?"

"Peter’s crazy, that’s what. He doesn’t think the Ranchers will let us in. He believes they would rather sign our death warrants than let us in."

"That’s absurd. And if you are that crazy, then why are you going over there?" Sue asked Peter, pointing at him.

"Do you believe me?"

"No!"

Peter nodded. "That’s why." He got up and walked out.


	8. Chapter 8

Li watched the trip on closed circuit with everyone else, but it was boring to spy on a man driving a loader truck 60 meters across Moonscape, and eventually the station returned to half-hearted and mostly drunken preparations for evacuation. When Peter made it to the Wadi an hour and a half later, Angie finally turned away from her computer screen, where she had watched every meter of his trip.

"That’s it, then. He’ll arrange everything and we’re out of here." She put her head in her hands.

"You won! Act like it." Cooke sat behind her, counting pencils. She stopped and inspected Angie. "What’s the matter?"

"This isn’t like him," said Angie, and spun her chair a couple times in a circle. Li agreed, but he was surprised that Angie was questioning her victory. 

Her feet hit the floor hard, the rubber soles squealing like bad brakes. "Take me to Sam."

Li took Angie into the heart of the LQ corridors, where three engineers where tearing apart several electrical boards that looked half rusted out. Angie stopped to watch their work, and they stopped to stare back. Sam crawled out of an access hatch, a screwdriver clinched in his mouth and his eyes dead set on Angie. Several people backed away from the standoff, but Li folded his arms and drew himself up to full height. In the cramped corridors, his six-foot-two frame touched floor to ceiling, and he wasn't above using that to their advantage.

"I don’t remember seeing this particular rerouting on the schedule," Angie said.

"Angie, I’m following orders, okay?" Sam handed the screwdriver to an engineer, who wiped it on his pants leg.

"Mizmo’s?"

"Peter’s."

Angie frowned. "What’s going on, Sam?"

Li had a bad feeling about it, which only got worse the more Sam explained. He liked Sam, who was a straight shooter and very damn smart, but everything coming out of his mouth about Peter sounded plain stupid. 

Angie and Sam were at the stage of waving their arms aggressively at each other when the ground shifted. Explosions were silent in the vacuum of the Moon’s atmosphere, but they were never _quiet_. The blast vibrated through the mining offices, knocking furniture around and making things and people crash to the floor. For a few stunned seconds Li thought an old, overlooked mining charge had gone off in the tunnels. That illusion only lasted for a moment, though.

"No way that was from the mines, that was surface level!" Sam ran down the corridor next to Angie, Li trailing behind them so they could talk without his bulk in the way.

"He’s right. Something screwy about that blast, it came from the wrong direction," Li added, slowing down in order to keep from running Sam over.

"Fine! Whatever it is, I want to see it." Angie led the charge into Central Station, the heart of the mining complex. It was running on low-power automatic life support, and no one was even posted there full time anymore, so it was a dark and moody den. Its view of the plains inside the crater was magnificent, but disappeared instantly in the glare of the lights Angie and Li turned on as they swooped through the room, throwing switches and pushing buttons to bring everything online. Sam was already sitting on a chair, his feet tucked under him for height, reading the security logs. 

An engineer and a helmsmen barged in and stopped when they saw Angie. 

She turned on them. "Tsiklauri, take the communications station; Khalid, help Sam with the data he’s reviewing."

Li watched as everyone settled in quickly to start figuring things out. He drifted between communications and the helm station, which given the circumstances was the best place to run queries on internal station damage.

"Angie!" Sam called out after he spent a few minutes with Khalid. Angie left Tsiklauri to field all the incoming verbal reports from their departments and issue whatever comforting words were called for. She pulled Li behind her, and he was glad to be out of it because he did not want to comfort anyone until he knew what happened.

"It was out by the Wadi. By their shipping dock," Sam said, and Khalid looked away. Angie’s lips went pale. Li put a hand on her shoulder, trying to ground both of them.

"Peter—" Angie whispered, her voice hard and shocked.

Li's mind went back what Sam was telling them right before the explosion about Peter's suspicions. Ten minutes earlier, it had seemed like a ludicrous idea.

"We got coverage?" Angie asked, her throat sounding dry. 

"Working on it, sir. I do not know if the cameras facing the Wadi were left on—" Khalid said as he worked at a board, typing and punching buttons in a fury. Sam leaned back and let him go. Khalid finally looked up, his mouth tight. "No."

"Damnit!" Angie blasted the word and hit the side of a console, making everyone in the room jump. 

"Wait!" Sue appeared from the doorway and talked directly to Khalid. "There has to be a satellite overhead, there always is. Maybe Go-Go3?"

Khalid shook his head. "No, not Go-Go. But the Deathstar, maybe." 

It was an ancient machine that was the largest and oldest satellite still in continuous operation around the Moon. Its official designation was DS-IV but it had worn its nickname for two generations and would likely continue to wear it for two more. It was bulky and slow but incredibly reliable. Sam and Khalid tapped it, which took a few minutes of hacking since it was currently Israel’s paid access, and brought up the surface pictures from the time of the accident. The blast was visible from thirty kilometers up, but it was not until they dialed down the image that everyone saw what actually happened.

"Ohmighod, the truck!" Sue stared up at a display monitor as the explosion looped over and over: Peter’s truck, driving away from the Wadi, disintegrating in a white, soundless flash. 

Angie was motionless. "Have we heard from the Ranchers?" 

"No, sir. But I can ping them, if you want." Tsiklauri stood at the board, looking as if he were willing to smash it into 1000 pieces if she asked that too.

"Do it." 

Sam sat up and eyed Sue, who was holding herself up at the console next to him. Nobody talked at all, though, while Tsiklauri kicked a message to the Wadi. Finally a reply came back.

_"Sorry, Commander McDonnell, but we’re still trying to understand what happened ourselves. We can’t get out the lock."_

Angie spun on Sam. "What does he mean?"

Li waved a hand at the screen, talking softly because he knew his words would land like blows. "Look at the explosion, Angie. It was right next to their main lock. They’ve only got three, and the other two are on the far side of the entire complex. If that blast structurally compromised that particular door, they can't open it." He glanced over at Khalid, who knew the numbers better than he did. The engineer shook his head.

Angie looked murderous. "So what are they doing?"

Several looks were passed back and forth between everyone in the room.

"Damnit! I asked a question!"

"Angie, are you seriously asking us to spy on the Ranchers?" Sue was astounded.

"Hell yes I am! It’s an executive decision and you can lodge your complaint about it with management the second your feet are back on the ground—Earthside!" Angie turned away from Sue, who stood speechless and motionless to face Khalid and Sam. "Do whatever it takes, but zero the Deathstar in on the Wadi. I want to know where every single Rancher is, right now!"

Khalid nearly pushed Sam out of the chair as he sat down to comply with orders. Sam wandered over to Tsiklauri. Li shuffled toward them. "Are we getting pinged Earthside?" He asked under his breath while Angie stood guard over Khalid, ignoring everyone.

"Oh hell yes sir. Israel is already lodging complaints with the U.N., and Mizmo is threatening to terminate the contract of anyone standing in this room if we don’t stop. Now."

"The Ranchers?" Li asked, breaking in. Sam stared at the floor, his arms crossed.

"Silent as the vacuum, sir," Tsiklauri said gravely.

Li nodded. He figured their best tactic right now would be to ignore everyone down below, and clean it up later. He looked at Sam.

"Peter was crazy, but Angie isn't," Sam said. "She never takes a risk without three backup plans. But maybe that's what we need." He shrugged.

Li agreed. They turned and went to stand with her.


	9. Chapter 9

Angie told Tsiklauri to broadcast the explosion to the rest of the stationers. The drinking stopped but the work did not as the image of the loader truck exploding outside the Wadi was piped out to everyone. Angie wasn't surprised when several people marched into Central to accost Angie about what she was doing to help Peter – no one could voice the idea that he was certainly dead – but Li managed to draw them off and direct them out of the room quickly. It was just as well, since Angie was oblivious to all of them anyway.

The Ranchers were making a show of trying to get to the damaged truck, but it was clear to everyone watching the illegal feed that the terraformers where not going out of their way to do it. Angie seethed but kept her temper as she paced back and forth between stations. 

Sue had backed off since the earlier confrontation but she finally approached. Angie watched her warily.

"Angie, they are going to shut off all feeds from the Deathstar if we don’t break off," she started.

"Tsiklauri’s keeping a lid on the comm but the fact is, they’ve been threatening that for twenty minutes now. What’s your point?"

"Spying is one thing. I’m not against it, I don’t care. But the long term—"

"The long term? What does that mean? Sue, if the Ranchers did this, then they purposely killed Peter and set out to damage their main lock."

"That’s still outrageous and you know it."

"Sue, sit down and shut up." Angie pushed her into one of the empty stations. 

Angie made them crawl through the images coming in. They figured out that the two backup locks were still usable, although Tsiklauri verified they could only be operated from the inside. Khalid tried hacking into the Ranchers’ network, but it was pointless. It was locked up and sealed by the Ranchers with encryption that never came from Mizmo.

"Angie." Sue broke into the collective musings on Rancher firewalls.

Angie turned and glared at Sue over her shoulder. 

"About Peter—"

"What do you want me to do, Sue? I’ve got a team readying loader 45 for the trip. It’s not like they are rigged for that kind of long haul over—"

"Back off, okay? This isn’t about you."

Everyone stopped. She stood up and squarely faced Sue, giving a little shrug to tell Sue to keep talking.

"You’re doing the right thing, okay? I’m behind you, Angie, I really am. Especially since Peter is alive and well and waiting for us."

The room erupted in questions but Angie shouted out. "Quiet! Damn!" She marched over to Sue. "Show me."

"While you all are looking at the live feeds, I went back over the recording of the explosion. Over and over. Then…I went back further." Sue bent over the board and sent the images to the monitors throughout Central. It showed Peter in his space suit jumping around the loader in a standard visual check. He stopped by the back tire and looked at the wheel well, before turning to hop back to the Wadi’s lock. Then he turned again, hopped onto the loader, and got in the cab. Just as it started moving, turning to make it out the drive, they saw him leap out of the cab, hop back behind the truck and make a number of long, slow, heavy leaps to a rock formation some ways away. The truck lumbered on, straight down the drive and bouncing a little when came off the level section and onto the Moon road proper. Another fifteen seconds and then the by-now familiar explosion ripped the truck to shreds.

"He got out." Angie repeated the phrase several times, trying to convince herself to believe her own eyes. 

"Carrying the spare oxygen tanks! I don’t know if he’s still there, though." Sue ran through the tape on fast forward. "Looks like it, as best I can tell. Nothing right after the explosion, though. The Deathstar isn’t in a good place now to check, and it’s moving out of range soon."

"Those tanks gave him an extra four hours. He’s probably got over a tank and a half left, if he stayed still; he might be getting cold, though. That suit is good for driving in a protected cab but not for camping out," Li said, looking thoughtfully out at the crater out the windows.

Angie snapped her fingers. "Li, I need you here if we’re going to get the LQ to launch. You’re the materials man, and I don’t want to disintegrate on re-entry." 

Li’s expression was sour, but he nodded. 

Angie turned to Sam. "You're on lead for that. Get us off this rock alive."

"According to Mizmo, we’ve got 18 hours until all the windows line up for launch and re-entry," Sam said, looking at the skeleton crew around him in Central. He turned to Khalid. "That’s according to Mizmo, and I don’t trust them either."

Khalid did not even nod; he was already checking the numbers. 

Sam looked at Angie suspiciously. "What are you planning?"

Angie smiled. "What's the status on our transportation?"

Sam read the screen in front of him. "Loader 45 is almost ready. They’re juicing it now. It will roll in eight minutes."

"Hold it until I get there." Angie took off in a flat run, unsurprised that Sue was on her heels.


	10. Chapter 10

Peter kept trying his comm every fifteen minutes. He thought at first that the Ranchers might be jamming him, but then he realized he was just too far away with too many large ridges in the way. There was activity in the Wadi but no one came out of the lock to check on the truck. The explosion had been large enough to affect the lock, he reasoned, but he also thought it was possible that the Ranchers just did not want any survivors on their hands anyway. The lethal rigging he had seen in the truck’s undercarriage convinced him of that. He was betting on Angie to come investigate for herself; he just was not too sure how long it would take her to arrive at that conclusion on her own. 

He was halfway through the last portable oxygen tank when he felt the truck coming up the road. Bouncing out from his protected hiding spot, he headed straight for it. The loader lunged to a stop, kicking up dust, as soon as he was in view. It was the same open-cab model as the one he had driven over, and he did not know who was suited up and steering until he turned the comm back on.

"Good to see you!"

"Hey Captain! Welcome aboard!" The driver waved, and motioned him towards the back of the truck. Peter recognized the voice of Jacob, the lead materials sort supervisor. 

"Good thing you know how to drive!" Peter finally bounced up to the cab and hung outside of it for a moment, reaching in to shake hands – with the suits on, it was more like shaking ‘paws’ – with Jacob.

"Angie was fighting me for it, but I got more hours than her, damnit. Go on!" Jacob motioned towards the cargo again. Peter hopped around to the back and saw two suited women in the back, hanging on to loose tie-down straps. One bounced forward and gave him an awkward, padded hug. She motioned for him to go to channel three.

"Damn you! I thought you were dead!" Angie finally yelled at him, making his headset squawk with feedback. 

"I love you too." 

"Yeah, I know, but let’s keep it clean around your sister," Sue broke in, waving from her perch in the box.

"Whatever, Sue." Angie sighed. "Although she’s the one who figured it out, Peter. We hacked into the Deathstar and she’s the one who saw your getaway. I gotta give her that."

"You hacked into the Deathstar?" Peter paused getting in.

"It wasn’t my idea—" 

"Shut up, Sue! No, it wasn’t her idea. But yes, we did. My call."

Brother and sister stood for a moment in the truck bed, looking at each other through reflective lenses. 

"Don’t worry about it, Angie. We’ve got bigger problems."

"Sam shut the still down, and everyone is working 100% on the LQ evac plan. The engineers re-ran Mizmo’s numbers, too. Hell, Cooke is welding something, I think." Angie handed him a spare oxygen tank and showed him how to clip to a spare tie down strap while she talked.

"That’s a frightening thought."

"Wasn’t my idea either," Sue laughed.

"You could’ve just sent Jacob, you know," said Peter as the truck began its slow turn back towards the station. His comment was met with stony silence, which he took for sentimental self-consciousness. "But hey, I’m glad you didn’t. It’s great to see both of you. I was worried for that last thirty minutes."

"Some things came up; we weren’t really ready to mount a rescue operation," said Angie, waving her free hand airily.

Peter looked towards the front of the truck, as if he could see the station on the horizon. "This launch is going to be tight, even with everyone on the same page."

"No one’s happy about this, Peter. It’s not like the LQ transformed into a state-of-the-art orbital while you were gone." Sue appeared to shrug inside of her suit. 

"As long as we hit that window, I really think we’ll be fine," said Peter, forcing on a confident grin.

"Ya, for more reasons than one," Angie answered vaguely. Peter tried not to dwell on what she meant.


	11. Chapter 11

In Central, Peter and Angie inspected the last run-down on the Station’s status before the shut down sequenced commenced. They sent everyone else out to finish the ramp up to count down in the LQ, including Sam. Earlier, Li informed them that .5% of the outer tiles were questionable, enough of percentage to make everyone queasy, but Sam’s engineers thought they cheered everyone up by informing them that their odds of clearing the Moon’s orbit was only 78% anyway, so what did the tiles really matter? Angie’s suggestion that they space the engineers was met with enthusiasm. 

"I just hate knowing they’re right," Angie grumbled.

"Just doing their job, sis. Can you stay focused, please?" Across the room, Peter was waiting for her to power down two systems boards before he turned off the comm station. Angie nodded, hit the switches, and two more boards went dark. 

"After this, we can set the power-down count for the Station. Three hours. That should be long after we’ve left orbit."

"Uh huh, sure," Angie laughed as Peter set the count down. The lights automatically dimmed and the view of the crater was stark in the windows again. "What time is it?"

"1330. Why?"

The explosion rocked Central and vibrated through Peter’s hands. He looked out the window towards the mine entrance automatically, but everything was dark and stable. "Damnit! What was that?" 

"Don’t worry, it wasn’t us. The LQ is fine. Let’s get a move on, though; launch is in thirty minutes, right?" Angie calmly walked out of Central, jamming the door open behind her.

"What’s going on?" He asked, running to catch up. 

"We blew up the Wadi."

Stunned, Peter stopped sagged against a wall. "My god, Angie, you can’t be serious."

"I am. Damnit, they murdered Dad and tried to kill you! This is what they call war."

"I can’t believe anyone would let you do this!" He reached out and grabbed her shoulders, shaking her.

"Calm down! We didn’t really blow it up."

Peter let go and stared at her.

"Can we talk while we walk? Look, we couldn’t blow them up, although that was my original idea. Sam had his crew tear the data tapes apart as soon I told him what I wanted to do, but the Ranchers booby trapped all the main systems, so we can’t get near them. Anyway, Sue talked me out of it."

Peter was impressed that Angie had listened to Sue about anything. 

"And Sam convinced me it wasn’t practical, anyway. But one of the engineers – Khalid, you know, the quiet Tunisian – figured out something better."

"Better than killing them all off? Hard to imagine." Peter was developing a headache.

"Be a smart ass if you want, but this is damn near poetic."

"What is?"

"We couldn’t just rip the place apart, not with what the Ranchers have done to it. It’s like they were expecting an attack, kind of weird really. You know, Sam told me everything, even before your truck blew up. I knew you had something up your sleeve." She stopped in the darkened corridor and put a hand on his arm. "Peter, was it really Dad’s idea to stay in the lock?"

"Ya, it was. But it was still my call, Angie. My decision to do it."

Angie hugged him. They stood motionless for a second, and then the amber emergency lights started a slow blinking sequence. They began to jog towards the LQ hatch.

"Angie, tell me what you did to the Wadi."

" _I_ didn’t do it. We all did; Sam’s people came up with the plan, Sue’s people figured the equipment, Li oversaw the installation. We had three trucks out there, aside from the one we picked you up in. We already had loader 45 ready to go out the door to get you when we came up with this. That’s why it took us an hour longer."

"To do what, for god’s sake?" Peter was nearly yelling. They cleared the admin pods and started up the steep, long ramp to the LQ.

"Send them for a tumble, Earthside style. We set some of those deep-mining percussion explosives under a few key points, far out from the booby traps they set up, and they mimic a five-point Richter scale earthquake pretty good. When they went off, they affected structural pressure points on the domes, mostly, although what really hurt them were the two directed towards their life support systems. If everything went by the numbers, their water tanks are broken at best, compromised at worst, along with their air filtration system. It runs off the solar batteries, which are – with luck – now piles of junk. You know how much vibration those deep-mine charges cause. And there is one thing the Station was built to handle that the Wadi wasn’t: percussive blast explosions."

As Angie finished explaining, they passed the hatch and entered the LQ. Two people were there waiting to shut the double hatches behind them as they passed, and Angie and Peter finally stopped in the middle of a large cargo area full of beds. The living quarters’ partitions had been ripped out and thrown out; the beds were the makeshift seats that would hold everyone strapped down through launch and re-entry. Li was one of the last ones standing, strapping Cookeinto a bed while talking calmly. He looked up and smiled at them as Sam and Sue walked past.

"Glad you could join us," said Sam, smiling, and handed Peter a PDA with the count down checklist on it. Peter did not even look at it.

"You two were in on the Wadi job?" 

His serious tone brought everyone up short. The people already strapped down in beds nearby blinked and tried to look nonchalant.  
Sue answered. "We were. It’s the first time this crew has been united in anything for nearly six months. We all did it, and not a damn one of us is sorry about it."

"You basically created a five point earthquake under those people."

"We don’t think anyone was hurt, Peter. And they’ve got 100 acres of environmentals to rely on," said Sam.

"It’s what they wanted all along, to go ‘natural.’ We just helped them out." Angie smiled.

Peter looked carefully at each one of them in turn. While he did not feel too guilty about it himself, if only because of what happened to his father, he knew that they would all be out of a job (if not criminally charged) once they were Earthside. He felt far guiltier about that.

"Okay, fine. What’s done is done, and this junker doesn’t have a brig." He sighed. Let’s go home."

His team spread out to finish last minute system checks before launch. His sister tied him down to a bed and kissed him on the forehead before she lay down in the bed next to him to secure herself.

"You know, we mostly did it for you. Everyone really thought you were dead there, for a while."

"I know. Somehow that makes it all worse."

They stopped talking while the engines under them came to life. They sounded like old men, phlegmy and coughing, but they were on. Angie yelled over to him.

"So, you’re still kind of pissed about it?"

"Yep."

"Oh. Too bad."

Peter strained his head to look over at her. "Why?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the end of my cheesy experiment in online posting. I've still got to update over at Wattpad, which I dread, as that interface truly sucks in comparison to AO3. *sigh*
> 
> This story was written over a decade ago, and was rejected from a number of sf magazines, for obvious reasons. It's not a very _strong_ story, and as much as I like the characters I never could think of a way to make this into anything much better. So I polished it up and changed a few things but otherwise it is what it is. If you read it, thank you! And please feel free to leave concrit in the comments, I appreciate any and all feedback.


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